


The Eulogy

by badass_normal



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-02
Updated: 2010-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:22:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>There are loose ends by the score.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eulogy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittersweet325](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bittersweet325).



He’s being taunted, an angry black cloud of soullessness exacting some kind of sick and effective revenge.

She (it) appears on the edge of the jungle, a shadow or a ghost or a hallucination or all of the above and sometimes Richard’s heart launches into his throat and he vomits emotional agony onto his feet until he’s emptied of everything physical as well. Sometimes he just stares, sometimes he turns his back. There are seven stages of grief and he’s going through a different piece of it every day, repeating some, ignoring others, cycling rapidly between them. The poison of the moment borders on arbitrary and strikes him ruthlessly, without fail or warning.

It’s exhausting. It’s not really her. It’s not even proper wish fulfillment, because he knows that every little accurate detail has been carefully constructed by the devil that haunts the Island.

But every time he sees her, he forgets for one blessed moment, and it’s not long before that alone is what he is living for.

\--

 _If he’s honest with himself, in the beginning it’s her youth, something so distant and enviable that he can’t take his eyes off of it. Like if he could taste her, could touch her, his problems would be that much simpler. Her relative innocence trickling into his ancient and broken and enslaved heart._

 _In the end it’s just her. Small and stubborn and powerful and having no regard for the autocracy her alleged father has imposed on her. She boldly tramples and undermines her father's authority, and he hasn’t accomplished anything like that. Courage is as foreign as youth to a man like him._

 _She watches him, wants him. He knows because her eyes pin him down and freeze him in place and he ignites in the heat of her lust. Instinct begs him to make her his and he stands coldly and resists, delays. Wonders how long he will last._

\--

Too long.

In the presence of her smirking likeness his mind shrieks and fantasizes about what should have been.

For a man who cannot die, “never” is the most difficult concept to comprehend, more so than death itself. And it is the fabric of their story, regret doing the weaving. They have no future, they had no past, and the present is an illusion. There was no ending to Richard and Alex because there was never a real beginning.

Someday he will mourn. He has gotten good at it. But that doesn’t mean he will ever heal.


End file.
